Felix Sater is a businessman whose case was recently let go by a court in Manhattan. It has been reported that he had gained 250 million dollars from tax frauds. Felix Sater co-founded Bayrock which deals with real-estate business. He has also been known for his previous association with the current President of the United States, Donald Trump. Since this case was brought forward by a whistleblower, the office of the Attorney General had to choose whether to get involved or not. The whistleblower who brought this case forward was Fred Oberlander, a renowned lawyer. He was well known since he had helped fight a case involving money-laundering against Bayrock. During this case, Jody Kriss was the one who was represented by Fred as they pursued the case against the real-estate company.
Fred was hands on the tax fraud case. He had managed to get together some information from the money-laundering case he had previously represented. As much as some of this information had been dismissed by the judges during this case due to confidentiality clauses, Fred believed that it would play a great deal in the qui tam case he had on his hands currently. Despite Fred’s efforts, the attorney general’s office decided not to interfere with the tax fraud case that he had filed against Felix Sater. However, the officials promised to keep following tabs, in this case, to ensure the interests of the general public and the rights of the state were protected as was required.
Felix’s lawyer, Wolf, stated that this case had been dismissed due to merit. Fred and the lawyer who was helping him with this case had been accused of misconduct twice by the Department of Justice when they were tackling the Felix case. When the case against and Felix and his real-estate was brought forward, the accusations were that it was run by a gang. The gang was involved in money-laundering, bribing people for favors, evading tax in its operations, fraud that involved banks, emails, and wiring of money, embezzlement, extortion, and conspiracies among much more. Tevfik Arif was not left out in this shenanigans as the founder of the real-estate company. Jody Kriss, who was a finance director at the company previously, accused Tevfik Arif of his gross misconduct that included laundering of money, fraud and offering services that were dishonest among others.
Jody stated that Felix and Arif wanted to market some of their services under the Trump umbrella as much as they had not disclosed their criminal behaviors openly to Trump. Trump came out openly saying that had he known about the things the real-estate company was involved in, he would not have partnered with them in the Trump SoHo development. Trump further went ahead to state that he would not be able to identify Felix if they were to be in the same room which is questionable considering a source for the Business Insider stated that Trump and Felix met on a weekly basis.
Furthermore, Trump’s office at the time was located two floors above the real-estate office on Fifth Avenue. Felix also did not deny his constant meetings with Trump when Bloomberg interviewed him. Jody further disclosed that Trump had his hopes high with Felix especially because of the connections he had in Russia. Trump, however, denies ever wanting to invest in Russia. Despite the back and forth with this proceedings, the lawyer working with Fred on this fraud case against Felix, says that he will be appealing it. He is determined to pursue the matter further and to seek justice. As Felix and Trump further give their dispositions, Fred and the lawyer assisting him with state case are looking for justice.